If you know me you probably know that I have a lack-of-ability that isn’t a disability: a nose that serves only to prop my glasses up. I can smell things on occasion though, and there are a couple of odours that I can recognise. Of these, my favourite is “ship”.

Now I know what you’ll say, o functioningly benosed friends. It’s not really the ship, it’s the fuel. It’s the paint, the corrosion, it’s the battle between the ship and the sea and let’s face it, the sun isn’t helping either. It’s damage and decay, okay, I can go with that, but you know what? I love it. I love how the heat and the evaporation class as olfactory sensations in my underdeveloped brain, how they mingle with salt or sealife or whatever it is, organic or inorganic, that creates this magic of scent – or stench if you’re not me – with the passage of time. I love it. It’s everything at once: the mass of water with its sounds and motion, the mass of metal resistant, sticky, the light so intense it hides everything from sight. It’s summer. It’s industrial. It smells of ship.

That’s how I know it’s summer, when I can smell ship in the air.

This was the first summer that I’ve gone without it and frankly I feel – with autumn taking over calendar pictures because seasons have no meaning up here in the north and if I look out of the window it could be anything – like I’ve come out of a long period of sickness. It wasn’t summer, it was flu. Flu of the mind, intellect, will.

It’s as if the ritual of my youth — the sixteen hours of travel from one end of the eastern Adriatic coast to the other aboard a large tourist-packed ferry decked in late 70s design, on a basic ticket which meant transport only, no bed or even a seat unless you can stake one out if you board early enough and know where to set camp, but which provided that incomparable communal experience of dozens of people strewn about the ship having to abandon modesty and eat and sleep and socialise all in each other’s spaces, with pets, with children, in dozens of languages all at the same time, from departure in midday heat to the spectacle of dawn light outlining the darkness of the islands or the coast, signalling arrival — was some sort of magic that kept me well. Extract of summer, if you will. And without it, mind flu.

One of my beloved ferries got stranded last year, got itself stuck by a tiny island halfway down the coast. I hadn’t taken the ferry that summer, I flew in. Practical, efficient, and dull as fuck. Literally dull: it was as if it hadn’t happened at all without that smell of ship and essence of summer. A festival without its opening and closing ceremonies, inconclusive, unreal. I flew back north and the ship ran aground, grabbing headlines, and it was like reading about an old friend having taken to drink. Had we both given up?

And here’s what happened this year; now, in fact. Latest headlines. Nothing to do with the ships of old but rather an idea of ships and shipyards crafted and grafted in material form. And what happened is as follows: first there came news of a fantastic project for Croatia’s display at the Venetian Architecture Biennale which would be perfectly in spirit with the overall theme of ephemeral structures: a floating pavillion named “The Ship” built entirely of welded mesh, much like what is used to reinforce concrete. The idea was for the “ship” itself to resemble cargo, be built of cargo often found in Croatian shipyards; represent, basically, the essence of Croatian maritime life. The sea married to industry: say what you will but I’m in love. I keep looking at the pictures and envying people who saw it and set foot inside it even if they didn’t care much for the experience. I wouldn’t blame them, it only stops being mundane when it is lost.

And lost it was, and not just to me: next came news of the structure succumbing to weather conditions, or sea conditions, who knows. This wasn’t quite the mass of metal of my childhood days, more of a sketch of it: a study in metal, an artist’s – or, rather, architect’s – impression. Another Ideal Ship collapsing together with the nostalgia that built it. Much had been made of “The Ship” being built in shipyards that had sustained the economy of my hometown and its region since WW2, its construction coinciding with cheer surrounding the last-minute preservation of a massive ’49 crane so ingrained in local folklore that it was named after another folklore and Partisan legend, “Joe the Giant”. Joe, bless him, managed to cheat scrapyard death and is set for infinite retirement in a dedicated museum. What of “The Ship”?

In tribute and true mirror to its material condition, disarray on all levels. Architects involved say it’ll be fixed: the project, after all, had the backing of the Ministry of Culture and it cannot afford a massive waste of money when the whole country is in a financial crisis. Architects uninvolved pipe up claiming to represent the institutions protecting the discipline and issue a list of irregularities they object to, referencing protests on behalf of the very organisers of the Biennale. Their issue is as far from artistic egos as can be: a sloppy project representing the country reflects terribly on all its relevant industries.

I want to believe their sincerity, I do, since the complaint is concrete and level-headed and to the point: finally! Never mind my love for this ethereal structure of thirty tons, I’d give it up for a point, a clear decision, a clear mind that retires a respectable old giant instead of crashing it ashore. But if I did, I might as well retire my mind together with my memories. Where was this statement when the project was new? Why does it read like bad old hrvatski jal between the lines of carefully, professionally construed righteous concern?

And then I wonder: should I even care? I left. Temporarily, I tell myself, but life and nostalgia battle with more bite than what the sea and old ferries can throw at each other. And there’s that one thing about the pavillion that I know won’t let me be: did it smell of ship?